Recycling bias – change of mindset needed
This goes with a podcast I did on Callin.com
Everybody is talking about the heat, heat records, heatwaves. And I’ve written about the situation in e.g. Arizona in another newsletter. It’s absolutely insane. I don’t see too many stories about what we can do, but there is one story – or possibly just a social media post - that caught my attention for some reason. It was on recycling bias. I decided to have a closer look and do a podcast on the subject. Here’s the link in case you want to listen to it [back to edit: the podcast no longer exists - it got deleted when Callin was sold].
You know I’m all in favor of recycling. Don’t get me wrong. The Swiss are masters at it. We have great facilities and it’s an entire industry. We even recycle our plastic bottles without getting money to take them back. Our recycling percentage for PET beverage bottles is higher than in countries that put a deposit on their bottles – i.e. money you get back when you recycle the bottle. Also, I remember how happy I was (I think I even praised Coca-Cola for their involvement) when I found out that PET beverage bottle recycling had gone circular in Switzerland. I felt it let me off the hook for buying my favorite soft drink – it only comes in plastic bottles.
While doing some research for this podcast I started thinking about this some more and I now can’t believe I fell for that. I really did! I didn’t give how much energy was needed to recycle – well, anything really - much thought. Nor did I think about the CO2 emissions of the entire process. I mean let’s take those plastic bottles. They need to be picked up, sorted and that recycling plant needs to be built, heated, maintained, machines are running etc. etc. Clearly the only way to reduce all that energy that’s needed and the pollution caused is to use less! To buy less! To buy only what’s needed.
Just a reminder – we’re told plastic bottles and other PET bottles are okay because they CAN be recycled. Then we’re told recycle, recycle, recycle and that only 9% of plastics are recycled at the moment and that we need to do better. Or that we can do better. Well, that’s not the entire story and it gives the impression that we CAN recycle 100% of plastics and it’s up to us - the consumers - to do that.
Not true!
Only about 21% of plastics are sort of recyclable – check out some of my other podcasts on the topic. That leaves almost 80% of plastics that are just waste! That’s 0.8 million tons of plastic waste produced every single day. How is that sustainable? You don’t need to be an expert to understand that this is NOT a good thing. (I’ll give you more details on that number below). I’m not suddenly against recycling. Of course not. And I can’t avoid all glass, aluminum, and plastics. Having the possibility to recycle them is definitely better than throwing them in the trash. Even better would be if we had the possibility of not using them in the first place.
That’s why it’s REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE. This is one to remember.
But how did we get here?
When I looked up recycling bias the first article I found was: How Recycling Bias Affects What You Toss Where. It was about people not recycling small pieces of paper, only full pages. And that was true for anything you can recycle. It depends on its size and what it looks like in general. A plastic bottle that was squeezed together was less likely to be considered for recycling.
A quick side note on that: in Switzerland that’s what we are asked to do. It leaves more room for more bottles. I remember an ad with a dinosaur that stepped on the bottles and then put the top back on. Found it!
Back to recycling bias. I have just started a new job and have noticed exactly this happening. I make random notes on post-its or on smaller pieces of paper or I fold the paper. It didn’t even occur to me to take those small pieces of paper to the recycling bin. That’s absolutely ridiculous. I mean this happened to me even after I did an entire podcast on this topic or well, at least parts of a podcast. Recycling bias is real. I’m gonna want to do better! What I did though is bring a kitchen towel to work. Cold water bottles leave water rings on your desk. You can either wipe that with a paper towel or bring a cloth one from home and wash it occasionally. I think I get points for that.
A second definition for recycling bias popped up. It had to do with the recycling “hype” and that we were fed the lie that recycling somehow solves all problems. Recycling is all the rage after all – of course it is because “they” want us to keep using and using and using - because RECYCLING. By “they” I mean the people making billions of dollars from plastics. Or is it trillions? This constant message of recycle, recycle, recycle has led people to believe that recycling was the preferred option in the waste management hierarchy. I don’t blame them or us. Let’s all take a moment to remember that reduce and reuse come first.
I also came across the term “wishcycling”. It means putting something in the recycling bin and hoping it will be recycled, even if there is little to no evidence that this will happen.
To tie the two definitions together, I found this study in Nature on recycling bias and reduction neglect. I would have had to buy the article to read the entire study, but the abstract gives a pretty good idea of what’s been happening. I’m quoting the entire abstract here – my emphasis.
Waste generation and mismanagement are polluting the planet at accelerating and unsustainable rates. Reducing waste generation is far more sustainable than managing waste after it has been created, which is why ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ is ordered the way it is, with reduce first and recycling as a last resort. However, our research finds strong evidence for a recycling bias and reduction neglect. Across two surveys (NTotal = 1,321), most participants perceived recycling as the most sustainable action to manage waste. This error decreased when different waste destinations were emphasized and when choice options were reduced. When asked in study 2 (N = 473), 53.9% of participants recognized that the product design stage offered the greatest potential for mitigating waste and its impacts. However, participants only felt empowered to enact change via their consumption (72.9%) and disposal choices (23.3%). For consumers and producers alike, policies and interventions should motivate source reduction and reuse, which could help correct the misplaced preference for recycling.
Plastic Production
You’d think that with all the bad publicity plastics is getting, we would see a decline in production. This isn’t the case though. Still going up. From 50 million metric tons in 1976 to almost 400 million metric tons in 2021. If we keep the math simple, that’s more than one million tons of plastic every single day! That’s how I got to 0.8 tons of plastic waste produced in a single day.
I was interested in who the biggest producers were. A lot of it was behind a paywall, but I got some answer from statistica.com anyway. No real surprises. China produces 32% of plastics, the US 20%; the Dow’s packaging & speciality plastics segment has a yearly revenue of 29.3 bn USD; ExxonMobil Chemical a net income of 3.5bn USD. Just a reminder, plastics are made from fossil fuels. I talked about that at in other podcasts, but I might need to dig a little deeper there.
Essentially, we are doomed unless we stop producing more and more plastics, because we can’t recycle our way out of this crisis. We just can’t. There need to be other options for consumers – and by other options I mean AFFORDABLE options with policies and inventions to help us along the way. There also needs to be honest communication and information provided. I’ll be calling out anybody who promotes plastic recycling as a valid option to battling plastic pollution. I might have already ruffled some feathers. I mean the data is pretty clear. Almost 80 percent of plastics can NOT be recycled. And we’re producing more that 1 million tons a DAY. Seriously, I couldn’t make it any more obvious than that if I tried.
I always look to end my podcast on a positive. So, I talked about some inventions that are helping with the plastic clean up like the water sharks in Toronto Harbor. I put the links below. Of course we need to continue with the clean-up - that’s a given. Then I also had a couple of callers; something I truly appreciate. I’m going to end here with what one of them said: we need an attitude of gratitude.
Consume less. Use less. Need less. Simple.
Notes:
Podcast [back to edit: the podcast no longer exists - it got deleted when Callin was sold].
Experts Say Decades of Recycling Hype Has Backfired Dramatically
Recycling bias and reduction neglect
https://petrecycling.ch/
Notes for people who have listened to the podcast:
What is a WasteShark and what are they doing in the Toronto Harbour? | CTV News
https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Plastic-and-Climate-FINAL-2019.pdf
Very informative article. Thanks for doing all this research. "When we throw anything away, it must go somewhere." I feel we should add "rethink" to the 3 R's. When I shifted my thinking from "I am entitled" to "I am grateful" I started to want to do the right thing for our planet.
I try to buy less, choose a product wisely and make it last. The enormity of this data can shut my mind down so I try & keep it simple. I have a yoga mindset: I practice today so I can practice tomorrow.
I try and do the right thing today and again tomorrow. And at the end of the day recycling in whatever form I feel is the right thing to do.
Just wrote a response and it disappeared sigh Back to work 🙃 Love your post.